It goes about 25 tops, and the range is somewhere between 10 and 15 miles. It could definitely benefit from some better battery tech, but since all my money is literally gone I have to wait on that one Lol. It runs pretty well, but some parts upgrades are an order. Better back wheel so I quit losing spokes, new fork, and my freewheel crank just died so I have to replace that.
A while back I had a pair of 18ah SLAs go bad on me...so I went ahead and ordered the lighter-duty 12ah thinking "That will keep me from breaking spokes as much...and I'm not going to use that much power anyways."
Well I contacted the battery supplier of the first pair to let them know I was unsatisfied with their performance. He emailed me back and said "I'll send out another pair right away!" So now I have 2 18ah and 2 12ah batteries. What to do? I found a case that will fit the 18ah ones and I'm modifying a back rack to go on the front so now I'll have a (in theory) 30ah supply out of 40 pounds. I am stoked!
Does anyone know where I can get some very low resistance diodes that could be engaged all of the time so I can use all four batteries at once even though they are different capacities? I went to ebikes.ca and saw that they used to have a diode for connecting different chemistries together...and I know Justin was running three different packs on his cross-canada adventure... How should I go about this one?
I'm impressed. That's a new and really good idea for mounting a jack shaft. I've been looking for ways to do that and they have all been WAY complicated. I think the word for yours is elegant. Combining a mount for jack shaft, motor and controller is great.
I picture making the side panels pretty plain. There wouldn't be anything shouting EBIKE. I have an extra Currie (Unite) 1018 24V 450 watt motor, an extra controller and I can borrow my Pings from my other ebike, an eZip. On a reasonable quality mountain bike this should be a good, light, maybe quieter transport. How is the noise level from the two extra chains.
I picture my two extra chains will both be bicycle chains, not one a #25. I don't need as much reduction. The 1018 puts out 550 rpm on a 9T sprocket. A 36T on the left end of the jackshaft and a 20T freewheel on the right feeding a 44T on the chain wheel freewheel should give me about a cadence of 60.
I guess based on your experience I should go for the Sick Bike HD freewheel. It sounds like it is worth the extra $50.
Thanks for the idea. Don
Yeah the HD freewheel is probably your best bet. I didn't have the cash to get it but I will probably upgrade when I do. Let me know how it works out when you get into your build. Thanks for your nice complements about my build to...they're appreciated
The noise from the extra two chains isn't actually that bad, but from the tighteners I built it produces an audible buzz that would be less of a problem if it weren't amplified by the aluminum plates. I plan to spray some sound dampening stuff on the plates in key areas, and then I have fiberglass guards to build and I'll but insulating spray on the inside of those. Hopefully that will make it pretty stealth. Its noisy enough to where people I'm passing notice...but not uncomfortable.
I used the #25 chain because that's what my motor came with on the sprocket. I figured I'd just switch to bike chain on the other side. On the other hand you could rig the freewheel on the left side with bike chain...keep me posted on your project!
